A Tale of Two VisionsCan a New View of Personality Help Integrate Psychology?John D. Mayer University of New Hampshire

Personality psychology studies how psychological systems work together. Consequently, the eld can act as a unifying resource for the broader discipline of psychology. Yet personalitys current eldwide organization promotes a fragmented view of the person, seen through such competing theories as the psychodynamic, trait, and humanistic. There exists an alternativea systems framework for personalitythat focuses on 4 topics: identifying personality, personalitys parts, its organization, and its development. This new framework and its view of personality are described. The framework is applied to such issues as personality measurement, psychotherapy outcome research, and education. The new framework may better organize the eld of personality and help with its mission of addressing how major psychological systems interrelate. Keywords: eldwide framework, personality psychology, personality structure, personality measurement, integrative psychotherapy he discipline of psychology emerged to address such questions as Who am I? and How does the mind work? (Allport, 1937; Robinson, 1976). Today, psychologists ask more specic questions, such as How is a sentence stored in memory? or Which traits predict on-the-job success? Some psychologists believe that to better answer such questions requires a more integrated and unied view of the eld. Integrated viewpoints promote the use of diverse perspectives, methodologies, and procedures in addressing a given question (Henriques, 2003; Magnusson, 2001; McNally, 1992; Staats, 1991, 1999; Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2001). Such integrations also require the use of a shared language, and that can lead to the clearer accumulation of knowledge (Henriques, 2003, p. 151). Psychologys founders viewed the emerging discipline as studying a hierarchy of mental systems. At the lowest level were sensation, perception, and learning. Midlevel systems included motivation, emotion, memory, and intelligence. The highest level of such systems, remarked Wilhelm Wundt (1897, p. 26), might be the total development of a psychical personality. Since then, personality often has been viewed as the combination of major psychological systems (Allport, 1937; Mayer, 19931994; Wolff, 1947). Personality psychology, from this perspective, studies how psychological systems are organized as a whole. 294

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The recent calls for integration in psychology, however, have largely ignored personality psychologys role. It is not hard to see why. Disciplines can be characterized in part by their eldwide frameworks: the ordered list of topics used to present a disciplines subject matter. A elds framework creates an impression of what is studied and why. Whereas personality psychology was supposed to become a discipline that studied the collective action of other psychological systems, the discipline today often seems fragmented itselfif not prescientic (Derlega, Winstead, & Jones, 1991; Mendelsohn, 1993). Today, personalitys dominant eldwide framework is the perspective-by-perspective approach. This approach describes personality from a succession of theoretical perspectives such as the psychodynamic, humanistic, social cognitive, and evolutionary. This framework was originally judged useful not necessarily because the theories were correct but with the hope that the conict among them would generate important research (Funder, 2001; Hall & Lindzey, 1978, p. 705; Monte & Sollod, 2003; Pervin, Cervone, & John, 2005, p. 541). Since then, common interests among those who study personality have become apparentfor example, many personality psychologists are interested in the study of individual differences and traits such as the Big Five (Goldberg, 1993). Yet viewing the system from multiple perspectives may not adequately reect such common pursuits. In this articles rst section, I describe personalitys perspective-by-perspective framework and its vision for personality. Then I describe a new framework: the systems framework for personality. The topics for this new framework are (a) identifying the personality system, (b) describing personalitys parts, (c) understanding personality organization, and (d) tracing personality development.I am deeply appreciative of the help I received in preparing this article. Zorana Ivcevic and Marc A. Brackett read early versions of the manuscript and offered important comments that changed the article for the better. Mike Faber, Xiaoyan Xu, and my father, Arthur C. Mayer, read and/or commented on later drafts, which led to still further renements. Sherry Palmer, of the University of New Hampshire Photographic Services, drew the computer-generated Figures 1 and 2 and contributed key ideas that led to their clarity and elegance. The last drafts of the manuscript were greatly improved by comments from David R. Caruso. The views expressed are those of the author. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John D. Mayer, Department of Psychology, 10 Library Way, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824. E-mail: jack.mayer@unh.edu

In the articles second section, I describe the frameworks rst topicits opening actwhich includes dening personality, depicting where personality is, and examining the data that describe it. I also touch on the issue of personality structure and how conicting structures can be accommodated in an integrated view. The third section provides a fresh look at the areas of personality measurement, psychotherapy, and the teaching of psychology. In the nal section, I address how this new eldwide framework might renew personality psychology and contribute to a more integrated psychology.

Hall and Lindzey (1957) then created a framework to present the theoretical work up to that time. They began with a general description of what personality theories are. They then catalogued the theories one by one or in small groups and presented each one with a bit of discussion and nonpartisan evaluation. Over time, the theories grew in number and were combined into broader perspectives: the psychodynamic, humanistic, behavioral, and social cognitive (Emmons, 1989). Those views and others make up the perspectives approach today. The work of Hall and Lindzey was both respected and inuential (Norcross & Tomcho, 1994) but what does it say, exactly, about personality? One of its implications is that personality is best viewed from conicting worldviews on human nature views which often cannot be readily reconciled. Depending upon ones opinion, the irreconcilable differences emerge because the perspectives (a) are fundamentally philosophical rather than scientic or (b) address different questions (Funder, 2001; Monte & Sollod, 2003, p. 653; Pervin et al., 2005). To be sure, some common ground exists in the eld. For example, many psychologists study the Big Three or the Big Fivetwo sets of traits that include such examples as ExtraversionIntroversion and NeuroticismStability (John & Srivastava, 1999; Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, & Kraft, 1993). These traits, however, can provide only a limited view of the personality system by themselves. To envision personality more fully in the perspectives framework requires either picking a view sympathetic to ones own or picking and choosing the best ideas from each theory, but without guidance as to how to integrate them. A New Vision There exists an alternative vision for the eld of personality psychology. Psychologys founders perceived that the discipline would focus on such mental systems as sensation, perception, learning, and memory, as well as on larger systems that integrated them, such as intelligence and social behavior. There was room for still higher level systems that organized the rest. Early textbooks placed the self, the will, and similar topics at that pinnacle (Angell, 1908; James, 1892/1920; Wundt, 1897). These interests were gradually drawn together as the study of personality (Allport, 1937; Roback, 1927; Wolff, 1947; Woodworth, 1921). Robert Sears provided a mid-20th-century perspective on such a systems approach in the inaugural volume of the Annual Review of Psychology. Personality, he wrote, could be studied according to its development . . . dynamics of action . . . [and] structure (Sears, 1950, p. 105). Searss approach was used by subsequent Annual Review authors (e.g., Child, 1954; Messick, 1961). He had, however, left the key terms structure and dynamics undened. Questions ultimately arose over what the terms meant and whether the distinction was useful. Finally, Searss approach was abandoned (Holtzman, 1965; Klein, Barr, & Wolitzky, 1967). In the 50-odd years since Searss simple formula, several advances have occurred that have opened the door 295

A Tale of Two Visions: The Present Status of Personality and a Possibility of ChangeThe Dominant Vision A eldwide framework is an outline for the contents of the eld. Such a framework is used in textbooks and by eldwide research reviews to order their topics (Mayer, 1993 1994, 1998a). Aspects of that outlineits introduction, organization, and contents create a view of a eld. When a eldwide framework works, it conveys the major contents of the eld accurately and meaningfully. The dominant framework of personality today, the perspective-by-perspective view, emerged gradually. Through the rst half of the 20th century, theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers, Raymond Cattell, and Gordon Allport each developed a wide-ranging description of the personality system. These views were interesting, persuasive, and com